A large existing library of calibration procedures currently exist in many organizations. These procedures represent a significant investment in Metrology engineering. Providing a mechanism to migrate these procedures forward is critical due to the significant cost associated with redeveloping them for use on different platforms.
Within existing Metrology procedures libraries, it is not uncommon to find as many as five different procedures which support the same test instrument. This has historically been required due to differences in the standards available at the various supporting laboratories. Where automation is available, it typically exists as an additional approved procedure in this library. This invites disconnects in the level of service provided by different procedures for the same test instrument. These disconnects marginalize the analysis of calibration and reliability data which is used in both calibration interval and uncertainty data analysis. Further, when problems are found in one procedure, it is required to determine whether the other procedures, which support the test instrument, are also adversely affected. This adds cost to maintaining the calibration procedure library.
The individuals who write calibration procedures (metrology engineers) are not computer programmers. While some of these procedure writers do have computer programming skills, there is a significant cost associated with training the entire procedure writing staff to work with a computer programming language which becomes unnecessary when the present invention is utilized.
Existing technical agent databases contain detailed information regarding which procedures and standards are approved for use at which locations of an organization, as well as calibration and maintenance intervals for all test equipment found throughout an organization.
The ability to collect parametric data on each calibration event and up-line this data is necessary to ensure that an audit trail can be established and that the completion of an organization's data collection tool can take place without the need to double key the results.
In a fully deployed mode of the invention, depending on the organization, several thousand workstations may be required to support the calibration activity performed across the organization. The costs and logistics associated with keeping these workstations current with the latest approved procedures, software, and operating system patches, is significant.
Technology, and particularly computer related technology, is advancing at a rapid pace. Dependence on existing hardware, software, and operating systems would undermine the value of any proposed solution if such elements were no longer available in the future. Protecting against obsolescence by anticipating the need to forwardly migrate calibration procedure elements is a key design element. For these reasons, organization of the calibration procedure elements in a relational database structure provides a mechanism to make systematic changes across existing data without having to recreate these elements.